I KNOW the Echo has covered this topic with some vigour but may I comment further as a local trader and as a member of the traders’ association.

The introduction of community toileting on Ashley Road is simply not working.

The scheme should not have been put into place without six consenting businesses as there would not be significant cover along the road. We have three: one is a supermarket, one a pub, the other a small café.

The reaction I get from asking people what they think of using these premises (females I admit) is unanimous, none would enter a pub, none think it correct to use a café and the use of a high end supermarket as a replacement public toilet is a joke.

Local people are totally bewildered as to why there are no public loos.

We are getting reports from shops within the immediate area of the Jubilee Road toilets of people using the rear of their premises as a relief stop, (having made their way to the loos to find them closed), to the extent that we believe this is a serious environmental health hazard.

One shop manageress will not allow her young female staff to exit the rear of the premises fearing what they will see.

Cllr Dion is strongly defending the position of the council and quotes astronomical figures to re-open our main hub toilets, but she does not have to trade here and seems only bent on a crusade to remove as many public costs as possible and sadly we are caught in the middle.

Apparently there is no law to force the council to provide public toilets but morally there really should be.

It’s unfair to place Waitrose in the position that they find themselves in at present (they have the only disabled loo on the road with clear access) and I personally feel they did not open to become Ashley Road’s public loo.

There are now petition forms in many of our shops urging the council to overturn an ill thought out scheme and I implore local people to sign as a matter of urgency as the council need to listen to public opinion and stop telling us what they our representatives want for us and not what we want of them.

MIKE OCKENDON, Just Michael Hair, Ashley Road, Poole